


Go often to the house of thy friend

by Beginte



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Bond & Camille friendship, Bond is smitten with Q and Camille is there to witness it, Bond whinges a lot, Bond/Q developing relationship, Camille is very patient, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-08-16 02:28:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8083120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beginte/pseuds/Beginte
Summary: Camille and Bond remain friends and occasionally meet up to talk. One day, Camille finally gets to meet this Q Bond's been endlessly talking about, and it's in some rather unexpected circumstances.





	

**Author's Note:**

> It's actually a fill for my own prompt for the 007 Fest because I am that kind of a dork :D Basically, I got this idea while writing the prompt, and now I finally got around to posting it.

* * *

Camille and Bond remained friends - well, at least as much as one can in their profession. They keep in touch, more or less, when they remember and when they have the time or the inclination to reach out.

She visits him sometimes. They have drinks in his flat and talk, catch up on things, swap work stories - she’s a full-time spy now too. She’s glad they do this, it’s a good thing. And both of them have too few friends. At least she sometimes feels she has too few - she doesn’t know how James feels about his own pathetic number.

It goes well for a while, but then he’s suddenly declared dead. Hearing it through the intelligence channels is like a cold punch to her solar plexus. She’s just back from a literally dirty job in the swamps of Florida and it makes her feel so very tired and rather numb. He was the only one who actually understood her, trivial as that may sound. She hopes it’s a mistake and he’s just really good at going MIA.

It turns out she was right to hope for it, and soon enough she hears he’s back to life. But something happens and soon after news leaks out in the intelligence community that MI6′s M is dead. She remembers James telling her M liked to think she was his mother, and she goes to see him just over a week later.

He’s not well.

Depression hangs blatantly on him, heavy and ashen - it almost makes her wish for a fire. But he makes an offhand remark that lets her know he’s glad to see her again, and she tries to visit him as regularly as their jobs allow.

He gets better surprisingly quickly (for a loss of this magnitude). And as he does, a new someone begins to emerge in his side of their talks. Hesitantly at first, bitten off mid-sentence and tucked back into privacy, but then bolder and more unrestrained, a figure emerges: Q.

The picture comes together piece by piece. James lets go of information one scrap at a time, allowing Camille to see something private, and gradually learning to reveal more and more, learning to open up. It doesn’t take her a long time to pick up on James’ rather personal feelings.

Q is a young, unbelievably intelligent man - James’ superior at MI6, which makes the whole thing more delightful. He’s the Quartermaster and also a genius hacker. He helped James carry off the plan that ultimately got M killed. They work well together. He has dark hair and wears glasses. He said something wonderfully waspish the other day. He likes Earl Grey. He smirks and teases Bond and they banter about age. He’s a very good handler. He berates James for losing his equipment. He has a very attractive smirk. His fashion sense makes James’ eyes and teeth hurt. He installed Scrabble on James’ phone. His anorak needs to burn, honestly. He spends a lot of time in R&D.

Q, Q, Q, _Q._ As their visits go by, it’s practically all James talks about, and Camille is condemned to sink into his still new-smelling sofa and sip her drink while he recounts yet another Q incident or piece of trivia.

But he’s got great booze and is a generous host in that respect. So as long as he keeps her glass full and then returns the favour by listening to whatever she wants to talk about, he can wax poetic about his boffin as much as he likes.

She has to admit, he does sound interesting. Brilliant and smart-mouthed and quick-witted, and if Bond’s lust-fuelled descriptions are apt, then he’s unbearably gorgeous too.

Their latest meeting goes pretty much the same way it usually does: they sit in his living room and enjoy drinks while talking. James goes first today, because he’s sour and in a bad mood.

“He’s angry with me because I ruined his equipment again,” he scowls, pouring them both some whisky.

“Then stop ruining his equipment,” she’s seen him in action. Things very nearly fall apart as soon as he touches them.

He smirks into his tumbler.

“He’s very sexy when he’s angry,” he hums, and she rolls her eyes.

“And you’re very pretty when you’re dumb. Keep working it, maybe he’ll go for it.”

He scowls again and kicks at her without any heat behind it, his foot barely managing to nick the toes of her shoe.

“I don’t ruin his equipment because he’s sexy when he’s angry,” he growls. “It just happens. Though this time I might have gone overboard.”

“Literally?” she asks dryly.

“Now, how did you know that,” he says in mock charm, sarcasm dripping off his voice as much as off his nettled, saccharine smile.

“Call it an educated guess.”

He slumps into sulky silence. She sips her drink and studies him pensively. For all that he’s scowling now and rumpling an expensive suit while slouching and drinking hard liquor at 2pm, he looks better than a while ago. His M’s death had hit him hard, as did everything surrounding it. But he’s _visibly_ better now, the heavy apathy of depression gone, replaced by a spark in his eyes.

It’s that Q of his. Camille likes him already. This grumpy bastard is her friend, and Q must be someone quite special to put a spark back into him. A spark she never saw when they first met. He’s more energised now, more at ease with his own mind. His prison is no longer in there.

He’s happier, smirking and livened up with the aim to pursue his Quartermaster, and not for a one-time shag either. He’d quite literally told her that a while ago, and she can see easily enough that it’s true. Well. Good for him. Her heart flutters with a bit of warmth at this, but he doesn’t need to know that.

“Have you tried bringing him something back as an apology, or just as a gift?” she asks because she wants him to succeed. He deserves it. And from what he’s told her about him, this Q sounds like James would be a good match for him.

“Yes,” he eyes her. “I bring him souvenirs,” he doesn’t elaborate, which means he brings them out of genuine thoughtfulness and warmth, not as a joke or a bribe.

“Good. Now try to bring his equipment back too. He works hard.”

“I know. But he enjoys it.”

“Except today.”

“Except today,” he scowls again at the reminder, and she smirks at having shot him down. She enjoys it a little bit too much for it to still classify as humane.

He’s silent for a murky while, sulkily downing the rest of his drink, and then she spends the next eleven minutes listening to him talk about Q and how exceptionally brilliant he is. He’s describing some clever new invention of his, something to do with modifying a car - apparently, his Q is a mechanical engineer as well as a programmer and a hacker, at which point she’s beginning to think he might be too good for James. (She doesn’t _really_ think so. But she would tell him she does if he provoked her.)

His eyes are a bright, electric blue like she’s never seen them be - not before Q had strolled into James’ life, brushing softly against her own life as well, through James’ stories and conversations. He’s not exactly chatty, but he’s animated, his body clearly filled with a new, crackling, sparkling energy and humming with new purpose and with something he holds very dear. And she can see much of it is this Q - not all of it, but a vast majority.

She smirks into her drink because James Bond is in love.

* * *

Work keeps her busy for a while after her latest visit, and then a badly sprained wrist needs to heal up, so all told it’s a month before she has the opportunity to visit Bond again. She’s just finished a clean and one day-long assignment in France, so she takes a quick flight to London because she feels like inadvisably drinking in the morning and swapping stories.

It’s 10 am on a Saturday when she scales the fancy building and lets herself in through a living room window. She would say he needs better security but he can probably kill intruders without rolling out of bed.

She doesn’t notice the laptop bag tucked under the heavy, low-sitting coffee table, but the flash of burnt sienna colour on the sofa gives her pause. It’s a cardigan, she finds on a closer inspection, an oddly charming thing, and definitely expensive enough (going by the label) but _not_ the sort of style to be James’.

There are two empty glasses. Scotch, she determines upon picking one up and sniffing briefly. And... there’s a battered pair of Converse kicked off by the sofa. Definitely a man’s size. Looks promising for dear old James.

She becomes aware of a quiet hum of a shower running because it suddenly _stops_. She wonders if this is the point she probably should immediately let herself back out, but the very next moment someone shuffles into the living room.

It’s very definitely not James.

He’s lithe, padding barefoot as he runs a hand through dark curls dampened by the shower, and he’s dressed only in a pair of track bottoms that must be James’ because they’re tied yet still riding low on his obscenely, beautifully narrow hips. James also wasn’t exaggerating at all about him being gorgeous, she thinks when he looks at her, blinking, his eyes rather exquisite behind his glasses.

To be honest, she’s frozen for a moment because she’s torn between finding this morbidly hilarious, bracing herself for an inevitable explosion, and continuing to enjoy him aesthetically.

He’s definitely startled, his mouth open as he blinks, and then he frowns and surveys her in a way that makes her think this is how he must look when he scans lines of code on his computers (James had blathered on about that focused, clever look quite a bit and she had to drink two shots to get through it).

“Hello,” he says, and she’s so surprised by him not having a normal, sane person’s reaction to finding an absolute stranger in the living room (which would be screaming or grabbing the nearest object to use as a weapon) that she misses a beat before she replies.

“Hello,” she finally says, which is when James shuffles into the living room himself. He does _not_ look pleased by this visit from a friend. She looks back to Q, suddenly struck by an alarming (but vaguely funny) thought. “This isn’t what you think,” she tells him, fighting a small snort of laughter because she would hate to ruin things for them (James deserves this, and they look very handsome together).

“Oh, I know who you are. Don’t worry,” Q tells her almost flippantly, and she thinks he has a very attractive voice, though perhaps a touch hoarse after last night, and she tries not to grin.

“Camille, Q. Q, Camille,” James says so dryly they might as well be back in that desert in Bolivia, and she can’t stop herself from smirking.

“Yes, I guessed, you described him to me repeatedly in fine and somewhat sordid detail,” she says, and Q’s eyebrows go up, a smirk of his own appearing slyly on his lips.

“Sordid, was it?” he grins, turning to look at James who probably won’t be letting her drink his superb liquor for a while, but it was worth it.

James growls and looks like he barely just stops himself from pinching Q on the arse, but there’s a spark in his eyes.

“Goodbye, Camille, have a safe trip back,” he says in a tone that leaves no room for argument.

She politely says goodbye to Q and leaves for the door, giving James two thumbs up and a rather dirty smirk when he follows her to the hall. He rolls his eyes and retreats back to the living room. Just before she closes the door, she can hear Q’s sly voice asking:

“So just how sordid was that detail?”

She grins and leaves them to their morning.

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed! I love Camille, so naturally I had to write her meeting Q!


End file.
